Anxiety and Evil in the Writings of Patricia Highsmith

Drawing extensively on the under-explored Highsmith Archive, Peters suggests that the usual generic distinctions-crime fiction, mystery, suspense-have been largely unhelpful in elucidating Patricia Highsmith's novels. Peters adopts a psychoanalytic approach to show that specific disturbances within her text have resulted in Highsmith's writing remaining resistant to explication and to the more sophisticated interpretative strategies that would seek to position her within a specific genre. Drawing on an impressive range of secondary material, including many elusive reviews, interviews and articles from the under-explored Highsmith Archive, Fiona Peters suggests that the usual generic distinctions -crime fiction, mystery, suspense - have been largely unhelpful in elucidating Patricia Highsmith's novels. Peters analyzes a significant selection of Highsmith's works, chosen with a view towards demonstrating the range of her oeuvre while also identifying the main themes and preoccupations running throughout her career. Adopting a psychoanalytic approach, Peters proposes a reading of Highsmith that subordinates murder as the primary focus of the novels in favor of the gaps between periods of activity represented through anxiety, waiting, lack of desire and evil. Her close readings of the Ripley series, This Sweet Sickness, Deep Water, The Tremor of Forgery, and The Cry of the Owl, among others, reveal and illuminate Highsmith's concern with minutiae and the particular. Peters makes a strong case that the specific disturbances within her texts have resulted in Highsmith's writing remaining resistant to explication and to the more sophisticated interpretative strategies that would seek to position her within a specific genre. Peters (Bath Spa U., Britain) examines the work of American writer Highsmith (1921-95), whose novels and short stories are variously categorized as crime fiction, mystery, or suspense. In a selection of pieces, she highlights themes that recur throughout Highsmith's career. Early work portrays the suburbs of the 1950s and protagonists who are exiles in a close-knit communities, she says, and later work carries the exile theme to actual foreign countries, among them femininity. A separate section considers the Ripley novels. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Drawing on a range of secondary material, including many elusive reviews, interviews and articles from the under-explored 'Highsmith Archive', this title suggests that the usual generic distinctions - crime fiction, mystery, suspense - have been largely unhelpful in elucidating Patricia Highsmith's novels. In The Waiting Room -- In Exile -- Tom Ripley : The Sinthome Writes Back. Fiona Peters. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. 1. In the waiting room -- 2. In exile -- 3. Tom Ripley : the Sinthome writes back.